


consecrate their golden hours

by uptillthree



Category: Noli Me Tangere & Related Works - José Rizal
Genre: Angst Train, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, dumb flowery prose, happy pride i guess, i’m so sorry???, post-el fili, semi-happy ending, the makamisa fic no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptillthree/pseuds/uptillthree
Summary: For a long moment, gazing at a face he has not seen since Paulita Gomez’ wedding— Basilio just stares. It’s his first mistake, you see: He cannot tear his eyes away.Isagani looks older, of course he does, but there is something older in the eyes too, all the boyishness and bravado of their university days stripped away. The sight of him should feel like a breath of fresh air, but instead, Basilio is driven breathless.





	consecrate their golden hours

**Author's Note:**

> i have. no idea why i wrote this. i have like 20 wips and i rly chose. to finish this one. i hope no irls ever find this bc im honestly so embarrassed. im only posting this bc it looks shittier the more i try to read it and i Can’t Stand it anymore. jose rizal sweetie im so sorry. 
> 
> (listen tho i 100% believe that if makamisa were ever finished isagani would def be the Jaded Male Protag Turned Antag. change my mind.) anyways enjoy this rubbish i guess

_Where_ _are the youth who will consecrate their golden hours, their illusions, and their enthusiasm to the welfare of their native land? Where are the youth who will generously pour out their blood to wash away so much shame, so much crime, so much abomination?_

i.

It takes seven years for people to forget about the students’ association and Simoun Ibarra’s name. It takes roughly the same amount of time for the civil guards to forget any association Basilio may have had with either, for Basilio to leave San Diego without a backwards glance, and attempt to rebuild.

Then, Isagani Florentino walks into Basilio’s clinic, meets Basilio squarely in the eyes, and, in the span of seven minutes, casually deconstructs the life Basilio has carefully cultivated for the past seven years.

ii.

For a long moment, gazing at a face he has not seen since Paulita Gomez’ wedding— Basilio just _stares._ It’s his first mistake, you see: He cannot tear his eyes away. Isagani looks older, of course he does, but there is something older in the _eyes_ too, all the boyishness and bravado of their university days stripped away. His hair is longer—he used to keep it so short and styled and _proper;_ seeing it now, hair pulled back with a tie, almost reaching his shoulders, makes him seem like someone different entirely. The sight of him should feel like a breath of fresh air, but instead, Basilio is driven breathless.

Basilio clears his throat. Forces himself to look down at the papers in his hands. Picks up a pen. “Name?” he asks, but his voice is hoarse.

To his surprise, Isagani just laughs. “Are we really going to play this through?” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Old friend. You don’t even recognize me?”

Basilio swallows. “I,” he says, then stops. “What do you need?” He can’t bring himself to say his name yet.

Isagani sits beside him on the couch slowly, taking in the place. When people point to Basilio’s house and call it ‘clinic,’ it is a gracious exaggeration: This is just Basilio’s home, passed down from the couple that took him in as a young adult. And now it doubles as a safe house, a kindness, an infirmary— a place with two bedrooms, three medicine cabinets, and a medicine drop-out student. It’s enough.

If Isagani isn’t impressed, he’s polite enough not to show it. “I came to you because you are the most skilled doctor in the province, or so they say, and we need medics.”

“You… need medics?”

Isagani looks at him, and his gaze is even. “For the war.”

iii.

Basilio’s hands clench. He’s wrinkled the paper. “No.”

There’s that same look of outrage in Isagani’s eyes, one Basilio has witnessed often; he wonders how Isagani has lived this long and still retained the same intolerance for injustice.

“You could at least give me an explanation,” Isagani says.

It’s simple. “I’m not you, Isagani,” Basilio says, meaning _I am a coward._ “I’ve had enough of revolutions to last a lifetime. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve had enough of revolutions, but you have not tired of corruption?” Isagani’s wit has not dulled at all, Basilio thinks absently: Instead, it seems to have only sharpened with time, the dagger re-fashioned into a sword, a gun, a grenade.

“I never said that.”

“Then what is it that you are saying?”

“I am _tired,”_ Basilio says, and he does not mean for his voice to _rise_ the way it does— “I have built a _life_ here, for _once,_ and— God save me, but I have lived enough years in fear, in—”

“But that is exactly the point!” Isagani spits, hands reaching out, eyes wild— wild like Simoun, wild like Tales, wild like all the people Basilio knew who, like him, are just tired, tired, _tired._ “I know what you’ve been doing for the past four years. Don’t you get tired of this, having to help people like this— in secret— never getting the medical supplies you need—”

“No, I am tired of _losing_ people!” Basilio doesn’t mean for it to come out like that, frustrated, desperate; he takes a deep breath and tries again. “I don’t need recognition or a license to run my clinic, however small it is, it doesn’t matter—”

Isagani laughs, and it is hollow. Basilio has never heard him sound like this. “It’s not a sin to be selfish, Basilio.” When Basilio doesn’t speak, Isagani shakes his head. “Don’t you want something?”

“I—” Basilio sighs and rests his chin on his fist. “I just want a quiet life,” he tries.

“A quiet life,” Isagani says with a hint of amusement. “In this economy?”

Basilio can’t help it: He laughs, too.

iv.

Uncomfortable as he may be, Basilio was not raised by his sweet mother and a handful of kind strangers to be an ingracious host: He leads Isagani to the small kitchen and turns on the kettle.

It’s easier, here, as he pours two cups of tea and slides one over to the man across him, to see Isagani as less of a stranger, to remember the life he’d given up on. They said that people who went to war never came back; not as the same person. After you first fired your gun at a real person, and you hit your mark, and your enemy went down, a veteran once said to Basilio, you looked different in the mirror.

For all that, Basilio thinks, Isagani looks exactly the same as the day they’d first met. Kind; unafraid; a storm.

“So,” Basilio says. “Tell me about this revolution of yours. Anyone I know?”

Isagani laughs, and it sounds empty. He doesn’t touch his tea. “Makaraig and Sandoval bailed and are in Spain now, as you can probably guess. Pecson is still with us, though you couldn’t ask him to fight if your life depended on it. Tadeo’s not too bad.”

It must seem mean of him, but Basilio can’t keep the disbelief from his voice. _“Tadeo?_ Really?”

A grin. “Leave this wretched town with me and see him for yourself, if you’re that curious.”

Basilio cuts him a sharp glance. “I’m not that easy, Gani.”

Isagani leans back in his chair, and this time, Basilio is blessed with a real smile. “I know.”

“I’m a little surprised you’ve come this far,” Basilio admits. “I’ve heard, obviously, of your group—it’s always good news when we do, though we’re never allowed to say it— but I never thought—”

“That I’d be part of it?”

“It’s a pleasant surprise, I’ll admit. The best I’ve had in a while.”

“I— I’ve learned,” Isagani says, with a smug little nod to himself, “to start thinking before I act, or speak. No one has yet suspected me.”

“Really.” To be honest, Basilio can see it all very clearly. Isagani is clever and intelligent and polite, and no one would ever expect the sweet young man who serves in Mass and plays with the little kids at the park and writes poetry by the candlelight to be such a _firestorm_ inside, a natural leader, anything like a rebel. “You mean you’ve finally learned to keep your head down.”

“I’ve only learned to wait for the right moment. But I’ve always been looking up.” And indeed, Isagani is looking straight into Basilio’s eyes. “What of you?”

(Once, walking along the dirt paths of his hometown, those alleys and shortcuts you only really knew if you knew your city like the back of your hand, like the way Basilio did, Basilio met an old rebel.

Basilio didn’t actually know at the time. He sat down and took the drink that was offered to him, and after a time the rebel began telling him about what it’d been like to hold a weapon, and what it felt like when they won a raid, and what it meant to give up, and go home, and find that the war followed you even then.

The man— Basilio never quite caught his name, and by then he was too drunk to ask— the man looked Basilio straight in the eye and said, _You know, boy, you look yer like a fighter, but also like yer a candle with the wick pulled out, y’know, where’d all your fight go, boy? Where’d it go?_

 _I think it died with my family when I was ten,_ Basilio said, and the man nodded, solemn, and raised the last of their sherry in a toast.)

“Well,” Basilio says. “I’m not dead yet.”

v.

For all Isagani’s urgency, their conversation stretches into the afternoon, cups of tea long drained empty and voices talked hoarse. It has been a while, after all. It’s been seven long years. Basilio learns of Isagani’s quiet revolution, and what it truly stands for, and what the _prayles_ try to twist it into. It’s the most news Basilio’s heard in years. He himself doesn’t have much to offer in return.

“You really came all the way here,” Basilio says, baffled, “to _recruit me?”_ He’s not sure he believes it. How useful can one pair of hands be, after all.

Slouched backwards into his chair, a posture uncharacteristic of the man Basilio once knew, Isagani sends him a heavy, lidded look. “Yes, well. You were important to me.”

Basilio turns away so Isagani does not see him flush. It’s pointless: That sharp mind misses nothing.

“You really won’t go with us? Nothing I can do to convince you?”

Honestly, Basilio thinks absently, I think I was convinced the moment you stepped into the room.

Aloud, he says: “I’ve built a life here.”

“Then rebuild a better one.” Everything is so simple, with Isagani. Everything is easy, with those words of his. “With me.”

Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. Basilio thinks his entire life has been nothing if not that. Carefully, he slides an open palm across the table.

Isagani clasps it. “You were brave once.”

At those words, Basilio remembers seven years ago: A wedding set for disaster, Isagani heartbroken at dusk, a revolution set for failure, and one last, fatal warning, because he’d be god _damned_ if he didn’t even bother to try—

Basilio remembers a lifetime ago: His mother’s hands gone cold in his, a man’s death-rattled voice, blood seeping into soil, a dozen promises he’d made and tried, _tried_ to keep—

Basilio thinks: Isagani, you believe I am brave for all the wrong reasons.

“I am a coward of the highest degree,” Basilio says, but he hangs on to Isagani’s hand and doesn’t let go. “So. Where and how does this revolution begin, exactly?”

 

addendum: isagani

By the time they step outside the door, the streets are becoming empty. It is closer to evening than sunset. Basilio locks the door as soundlessly as possible. Everything he needs, he tells Isagani, is already in his briefcase. At the edge of town, Isagani’s people will be waiting for him. Isagani checks, discreetly, for the knife tucked in his boot.

Slowly, they walk.

“Has it really been quiet?” Isagani asks, because he can’t imagine it. Nothing is quiet, these days. The death toll is a rising tide that no one is allowed to talk about. A revolution is coming, they say, but speak of it only in whispers, only when you are alone. A revolution is coming, and the third time’s the charm. Or perhaps Isagani is just hearing things. “Is it really ‘quiet’ here in your town?”

Basilio looks away, and Isagani can think of all the things he is thinking, news that has spilled over and spread from this town to the next. This town is quiet, but like any other town, there are— incidents. Innocents killed in military crossfire. Indios punished by the friars, by the Spanish, by the rich. People even Basilio cannot save.

“Not really, no,” Basilio says. “Quiet— no. Lonely, maybe.”

Isagani nods.

“But it isn’t like— well.” Basilio laughs. “It isn’t like I’m not used to it. I’m fine. I learned to be alone a long time ago,” he says, and it’s _infuriating._

“And I’m here telling you that you don’t need to be.”

“Yes, I know.” Basilio smiles down at his feet. “I’m listening, alright?”

“I must confess something,” Isagani says, and for the first time since their conversation began he sounds a little too rushed, a little less composed. “I lied. I did not seek you out purely because we are in need of medics. I—”

The honestly strips him breathless for a moment, and he stops to catch his breath. Basilio is looking at him strangely. “No?”

Isagani tries to laugh and it comes out as a half-terrified exhale. How silly, how typical— Isagani has planned ambushes and freed prisoners and stared _guardias_ in the eye without breaking a sweat—and it is here of all places that he falters—how foolish. How very like love.

“I wanted—to see you again.” How strange, that this surge of emotion, for the first time, robs him of flowery words, of prose. It is truly absurd. “I would have fought for you and my people whether you joined me or not, but—I really would have preferred to have my oldest friend with me.”

Basilio flushes. “Oh.”

“Just. If you wanted.”

It is always a strange feeling, laying his heart bare. Certainly Isagani is not afraid of it, but he has not done it for a long time, so surely he cannot be blamed for feeling some degree of apprehension. He glances away, and when he dares to look back, a smile is curling Basilio’s mouth.

“You know,” Basilio says. “I think I’ve missed you too.”

“You think?”

Laughter. “Shut up. I’ve missed you. Your stupid speeches about freedom and goodness—”

“Strange; you always told me not to be so loud, that I’d get myself killed—”

“Oh, you absolutely will,” says Basilio. “But that doesn’t mean it needs to stay unsaid, and it definitely doesn’t mean I haven’t missed it.”

And for all Isagani’s bravery, for all his ridiculous _talk,_ it’s Basilio who comes forward. It’s Basilio who steps into Isagani’s space, who presses his lips against Isagani’s own, and it’s all Isagani can do to close his eyes and _surrender_ to it.

When they part, noses brushing, Isagani grins. “Careful,” he says softly. “That’s almost rebellion, coming from you.”

Basilio opens his mouth, so, technically, Isagani decides, it’s his fault that the kiss deepens. Entirely Basilio’s fault, he thinks, that Isagani leans in, and Basilio presses closer, and Isagani is consumed, consumed, consumed.

His uncle’s voice in his head scolds him, calls this _sin,_ tells him _atone, my son—_ but Isagani’s own mind, the one which has learned to unlearn, says this is the farthest thing from wrongness, believes this to be as natural as the good earth he stands upon, knows this to be the brightest thing he’s had in a long time.

“Yes, well,” Basilio says, “Maybe I’ve had enough of keeping my head down, too.”


End file.
